Thunder
by Cyprith
Summary: It’s the storms that remind him most of what he had… of what he lost. Slash. VHD


Title: Thunder

Author: Kytten

Pairing: Dracula/Van Helsing

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Don't own.

Summary: It's the storms that remind him most of what he had… of what he lost.

Author's Note: I was feeling rather poetic. Thus, this one shot. Enjoy

* * *

Gabriel had always been a child of the sun. He basked in it, sparkled with it, _embodied_ it. There had never been a darkness so all encompassing as to take the sun's gleam from his eyes. Strange then, that the storms remind Vladislaus of him the most. 

Even now, nearly four hundred years away from their history together, he waits for those storms. He who was always the night to Gabriel's day— the brooder, the thinker, the insomniac. He who would roam the halls of that sprawling palace at night until Gabriel found him and coaxed him into bed with soft words and whispered promises.

He could never find sleep without Gabriel curled at his side… unless it stormed. Those nights when the sky turned inside out were the nights he slept like a child, content to fall asleep without that steady heartbeat under his ear. Fitting that those nights bothered Gabriel the most.

He'd said once, in a moment when the storm subsided, that every bolt of thunder split him open, reawakening the old wounds striped across his back.

"_Too reminiscent of God's fury?"_ Vladislaus had murmured, stroking those broad scars. Had it been anyone else, the touch would have brought pain. He took a simple pride in the fact that he had tamed Gabriel where all else had failed.

He hadn't realized though, that while day may cuddle close to night, it is never tamed for long. The sun rises, splitting the shadows. The sun, the Vatican— his undoing.

It had been storming. And so, he suspected nothing when Gabriel crawled into his bed. He'd smiled and held out a hand, long fingers curling over Gabriel's shoulder in an attempt to soothe away the pain.

A moment later, he was bleeding; crimson spreading over silk, making it obvious the color of his sheets were only a pitiful imitation of life.

Vladislaus remembers that silk— a color he'd always likened to blood, but never actually compared until that day. He remembers Gabriel's face, pale with guilt, with the force of the storm and the pained whisper of a memory of wings. He remembers watching Gabriel cry, watching each tear as it slid to join his blood in quest for permanence. He remembers the sound of his voice, cracking as Gabriel whispered his apologies over and over, intertwined with the garbled, half-heard explanation of his death.

_"I loved you. How could you?_" he'd whispered, furious at Gabriel, at the church and the fact he could no longer lift his head.

Gabriel had only cradled him closer.

_"I'm sorry. I love you, but understand it had to be done."_

_"I understand nothing," _he'd spat, blood trailing down his chin in cruel mimic to Gabriel's tears.

_"God—"_

_"God dies with me."_

And then life slipped away from him, Gabriel's response— a mix of guilt and anger— falling unheard into the abyss.

* * *

Now, as he sits in the window of the prison his father built for him, still shaking off the tremors of a third resurrection, he watches the storm and that mirrored door far off in the distance. And strangely, he's smiling.

"Fool me once, shame on you," he whispers, watching as a single dark figure crosses the threshold into the storm.

He smiles. Even with the distance between them he knows the slope of those broad shoulders.

"Fool me twice, shame on me."

The man keeps his head down, making his way to the huge doors at the end of the bridge.

"There will not be a third time." Vladislaus rises and turns, carefully stepping over the ruts and grooves of the ceiling as he makes his way to the door already swinging open.

"Hello, Gabriel." He grins, too-sharp teeth gleaming in the light of the man's torch. "To think you still give into such old habits after all these years."

Gabriel smiles— a twitch of the lips. He's come alone and unarmed in a show of trust. There will be no epic battles here tonight.

"To think you still remember those old habits after all these years."

Vladislaus smiles, laughs.

"I find that you are not so easy to forget, Gabriel."

And just then, it that one instant where daylight meets night, Gabriel knows he's come home.


End file.
